If you have a Netflix account, chances are that you have shared your password with another person. In fact, it has been estimated that as many as 10 million people are accessing the service without paying.

Netflix is currently testing multiple user profiles with a small group of individuals and plans to launch the feature by the end of August...

I still don't get why some people are so cheap that they need to get an $8 a month service for free.

In my case, I've shared my Netflix password with my mom, daughter, niece, nephew, sister, brother-in-law, and one friend. I have hit the two-stream limit a few times and have considered upgrading to the four-stream plan for $11.99. If Netflix locked-down the service, I'm guessing they would lose customers. They've probably figured out the churn associated with a more restrictive policy and decided the current two-stream plan is a better way to handle password sharing.

If I cut-off my sister to Netflix, I'm not sure she would subscribe...although Orange is the New Black was very good!

The only person who I've shared my password with is my son. He watches Netflix in his dorm room at college. Other than that I haven't given it out. But there is a good chance that I'll be moving to another city for work while the family stays behind. And if I do, then I'll get the $11.99 plan just to be safe.

I agree that $8 isn't much. I do understand why people share accounts though, but in the majority of cases I still don't think it's right.

I don't currently sub to NetFlix but if they offered multiple user profiles I might sub and make a gift of it and one of my Ruko's to my sister. She would never sub on her own as she only watches TV now and then (last time I talked to her about TV she hadn't watch any TV for over 2 weeks) but she does like to watch a movie now and then and sometimes rents DVDs. I have enough to watch without it but between the 2 of us we might get enough use to justify the $8.

Awesome. I have long been wanting to be able to have my kids launch Netflix, and click a profile selection that will just show them items in THEIR queue, not mine. And suggestions appropriate for them.

That's cool. I actually haven't shared my password with family specifically because I don't want them adding stuff to my queue or messing up my suggestions. If they add profiles I'll probably set one up for my Wife, my Mom and my Sister.

I still don't get why some people are so cheap that they need to get an $8 a month service for free.

Then you don't understand why people pirate movies, TV shows, music, games, etc.? Think of all of the talk of BitTorrent and Napster. Yes, those *can* be used legally... But are they? Mostly not. (Obviously I mean the *old* napster)

User profiles would be fantastic. My house has six Netflix watchers, each with unique tastes. I'd love to be better able to separate out queues and recommendations.

I seem to recall, way back, didn't Netflix have multiple profiles? I seem to recall having separate queues for my kids' discs and our adult ones, back when we were on a 2-discs a month plan. Then we went streaming-only.

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They did have profiles for discs. I remember seeing something about them phasing out the disc profiles in a few months. I wonder why they're getting rid of disc profiles and addi streaming profiles?

They still have profiles for discs? I'm fairly certain those went away a long time ago. I can see why they wouldn't want to deal with queues for discs. I think the logistics of shipping from multiple queues could be difficult.

Adding profiles to streaming makes perfect sense. I hope Tivo will do the same to the Tivo.

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They still have profiles for discs? I'm fairly certain those went away a long time ago. I can see why they wouldn't want to deal with queues for discs. I think the logistics of shipping from multiple queues could be difficult.

Adding profiles to streaming makes perfect sense. I hope Tivo will do the same to the Tivo.

I don't know for sure when it went away. I remember seeing something about it in the Happy Hour very recently saying that it was ending. But I haven't had netflix disc service in almost 2 years so I can't say for sure.

They still have profiles for discs? I'm fairly certain those went away a long time ago. I can see why they wouldn't want to deal with queues for discs. I think the logistics of shipping from multiple queues could be difficult.

Adding profiles to streaming makes perfect sense. I hope Tivo will do the same to the Tivo.

They were going to remove them, but then enough people complained that they allowed anyone with existing profiles to keep them. I think the option was hidden from new subscribers and anyone that didn't utilize the feature. Profiles for disks worked pretty well for me for years. I had 2 discs from the queue while my wife's profile had 1 disc assigned. But I went streaming only a few years back.

While I'm excited to see the profiles being added to streaming, it all comes down to client support. If it isn't implemented on the clients I use, then it is basically useless to me.

Have two discs, didn't ever use the profiles (but thought about it). For streaming, I would be fine with each App being linked to a Profile. The wife and I can have an unrestricted account, the kids can have a restricted account with their shows. I don't really want to pay for two accounts, but I hate not being able to watch non-child-friendly content without risking my little kids accidentally clicking on it if they are given unsupervised access via an iPad or something.

They definitely still had profiles when I cancelled netflix within the last year. I used them to bypass the 500 DVD/queue limit. Yes, I know I will never watch all of the movies, but I use(d) the queues to keep track of things that I might be interested in sometime. So they would add up fast, PLUS each DVD of a TV show set counts as one slot in your queue, so it's not quite as silly as it may seem. So I had mostly movies in one profile's queue and mostly TV in the other. ("Mostly" mostly (heh) because I didn't bother to move everything from the first queue to the other.)

I missed this and opened a "Netflix rolls User Profiles, but not for TiVo" thread elsewhere, with a brief description of what it is. As implied by the title, it's not in the TiVo Premiere's Netflix player yet, but then again it's not in the players of some other devices that I own so who knows? Maybe it will come to TiVo soon (not holding my breath ).

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Mike Scott

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Anyone playing around with this yet? I noticed tonight on my AppleTV that it asked me to choose a profile, so it has rolled out to me. I selected my name from the three profiles it listed, and it showed what appeared to be exactly what's been there for the last several years - a hodge-podge of suggestions appropriate for the various members of my family. I was surprised that it had named the profiles "Daniel" (me) "Stacy" (my wife) and "Zoe, Lila, and David" (three of my four children). I'm not sure how or where it got that information from or how it decided to do that grouping. It's possible I had Netflix Disc queues with those names back when I was on the disc plan several years ago - that's the only thing I can think of.

I next went over to the Netflix website and visited https://movies.netflix.com/EditProfiles which gives you very limited ways to change your profile - basically you can change the icon, the profile name, and indicate whether it is a kid profile. That's it. By selecting the profile name from the dropdown in the upper right corner, you can presumably then start modifying your queue etc on a per-profile basis and set up your "taste profile" for that profile. However, since I've no idea when (or if) profiles will make it over to the Tivo Premiere, I'm a little wary of culling all the kid stuff from my profile. I suspect I'll be able to do so but then they'll no longer have access to it from the Premiere unless there's some way to mark their profile as the default profile?

Reflecting on it further, I think what I may have to do is rename my profile (the main profile) as their profile, and remove all the adult stuff leaving only the kid stuff. That'll then be the default one. Downstairs, where we have the AppleTV and can select profiles, I'll be able to select one of the other profiles, which I will rename as mine and populate with my adult shows. Confusing. It'd be much simpler if Tivo just jumps on board and updates their Netflix app.

ETA: It looks like my main profile has my full instant queue. The other new profiles have empty queues. There's no apparent way to transfer the queue in masse to the other profiles, or to transfer individual selected items. I'm basically going to have to delete items from the main queue that I no longer want on it, and manually add items one by one to the new queues. It would have been much simpler (from the user-perspective) if Netflix could show me one master queue on the website, with little checkbox columns next to each queue item so that I could indicate on which profiles I want that queue item to appear.

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It would have been much simpler (from the user-perspective) if Netflix could show me one master queue on the website, with little checkbox columns next to each queue item so that I could indicate on which profiles I want that queue item to appear.

It'd take an awful lot of work to implement that operation for something a customer would only ever want to do once and which people who create their accounts in the post Netflix streaming profiles era will never have a need for.

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Mike Scott

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It'd take an awful lot of work to implement that operation for something a customer would only ever want to do once and which people who create their accounts in the post Netflix streaming profiles era will never have a need for.

I know; that's why I added the parenthetical.

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It's generous of Netflix to allow even two streams at $8/mo. They should allow just one stream and options to bump the limit for perhaps a dollar per stream.

Of course the real question is: how much would you pay if they offered the recent and best movies and series?

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It's generous of Netflix to allow even two streams at $8/mo. They should allow just one stream and options to bump the limit for perhaps a dollar per stream.

In addition to $8/month for two streams at a time they now have a $12/month option for 4 streams simultaneously.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlfl

Of course the real question is: how much would you pay if they offered the recent and best movies and series?

I doubt that the latest and greatest properties will ever be offered in an "all-you-can-eat-buffet" service like Netflix. Why should they when people will pay $4 or more to rent such titles (or $2 or more per episode to buy television)?

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Mike Scott

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.......
I doubt that the latest and greatest properties will ever be offered in an "all-you-can-eat-buffet" service like Netflix. Why should they when people will pay $4 or more to rent such titles (or $2 or more per episode to buy television)?

Not all people. I wonder if they're missing a market, similar to the music industry before they woke up to 99-cent tunes.

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